“Buffett’s returns appear to be neither luck nor magic”

Via Counterparties comes this academic paper:

Buffett’s Alpha
Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller, Lasse H. Pedersen

NBER Working Paper No. 19681
Issued in November 2013
NBER Program(s): AP

Berkshire Hathaway has realized a Sharpe ratio of 0.76, higher than any other stock or mutual fund with a history of more than 30 years, and Berkshire has a significant alpha to traditional risk factors. However, we find that the alpha becomes insignificant when controlling for exposures to Betting-Against-Beta and Quality-Minus-Junk factors. Further, we estimate that Buffett’s leverage is about 1.6-to-1 on average. Buffett’s returns appear to be neither luck nor magic, but, rather, reward for the use of leverage combined with a focus on cheap, safe, quality stocks. Decomposing Berkshires’ portfolio into ownership in publicly traded stocks versus wholly-owned private companies, we find that the former performs the best, suggesting that Buffett’s returns are more due to stock selection than to his effect on management. These results have broad implications for market efficiency and the implementability of academic factors.

In other words, exactly what Buffett says he been doing for 50 years, works.

Posted by on December 2nd, 2013 at 12:07 pm


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